Alessandro Oteri

1. First of all, I would like you tell us about your work. When was the moment when you had a clear idea about ​​the job you wanted to do when you were older? What was the path that led you to where you are today and what were the main difficulties encountered?

In these days I am reading many interviews, many that are told through social media and I discovered that almost everyone who does creative work started by chance. There was an extraordinary event that changed the course. I think, now at 52, that there is a call to creativity that sooner or later manifests itself. I, for example, made a mistake in a door and entered a shoe factory … I never left it. I knew I had something unspoken and suddenly …

2. What inspires you most when you make new pieces?

Inspiration is the greatest mystery of the creative people. Everything is inspiration, I would define it: the sum of the translated experiences.
Then everyone channels it into their work, for example I am a very material one. I see something and imagine how it could be in the form of a shoe.

3. The color blue often recurs in your work. How much is this connected to the fact that you are Ligurian? How much Liguria is there in you and how much is there in your creations?

Ligurian, swimmer. Raised in the midst of blue, a mantra and a destiny. I brought Liguria, my portion of Liguria in all my works and there is no interview in which I do not find myself claiming its origin. I am very Ligurian in all. In almost everything, I talk and spend too much

4. Close your eyes and think about your childhood. Which image focuses on your mind? What sensations, scents, flavors does that image evoke?

Let’s go back to Liguria, in the secret garden of my school, bordered by the city park. I remember everything, spring, colors and perfumes.

5. If you could get into a painting which one would you choose and why?

I could be at ease in a 17th century painting by Van Dyke as in a blue box by Mondrian or Klein. Now I see myself in a painting by David Hockney.

6. A woman in history, music, art or entertainment that you think fully represents feminine elegance?

I struggle to make a name, I have many. The elegant period primarily, the 1950s. There was taste and refinement. Let’s say the era of the great tailors and not of the “fast fashion” that made the attention to detail lose. Or rather, there are different details.

7. Your 3 favorite songs?

Creep played by Damien Rice

Halo played by LP

Il Corvo of Mina

If you ask me tomorrow I’ll tell you 3 more … I’m musically fickle

8. The slowed reality, the imprisonment and isolation, the uncertainties and fears that inevitably emerge in a delicate moment like the one we are experiencing … do you think that all this is changing or influencing you in some way? Are you ever afraid? What will be the first thing you will do as soon as you can freely go out?

First thing, a swim! I want air and movement. I have feelings of bewilderment rather than fear. I have to understand how to best deal with things, always with my reflective and positive approach. I reflect on how to be impulsive.

9. If you look up and look around, which object catches your attention?

A vase where I put a log in the water. It is making its roots. It is on my desk, we are spending these days together. Once the quarantine is over, I will plant it and face the next together.

10.If you look carefully in the mirror, going deep, stripping and peering over the first image that appears, who do you see today?

A lucky man who has yet to do things

11.When was the last time you thought “life is wonderful”?

Now

12.Dream in the drawer?

It is a dresser with many many drawers. I am dressed in dreams

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13. Many famous Italian brands have sold shares or have been entirely sold to foreign companies (Versace, Valentino, Gucci, just to name a few, but the list is sadly very long …); what do you think of this phenomenon? Italy in the field of fashion and craftsmanship has always been an excellence. How do you explain this situation? Why can’t we keep what’s ours, what we’re objectively good at?

It would be a very long answer, a treaty, but summing up the problem is only when finance enters fashion.
If fashion is business, you sell; if fashion is soul, you suffer.
No one likes suffering anymore.

14. You define yourself more selective than exclusive. What makes your beautiful shoes so special?

Selective was a claim for the online site, we changed it. It is difficult because in being one thing you risk excluding the other instead you are everything. I do not exclude anyone but I select, it refers to the product to the choice of materials. I tried to make a project where it offered quality at a price that didn’t exclude anyone. So they are exclusive without excluding … we don’t go out anymore!
However, they are special because behind each shoe there are people with their stories. And you feel it

15.Your greatest job satisfaction?

My craftsmen and how much the work behind it is recognized
Mine and them.

16. Coco Chanel said “Fashion is not something that exists only in clothes. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, our way of life, what is happening”. Do you think it’s true?

How many things Madame Chanel knew!

17. How important is choosing the right shoe to get an impeccable outfit?

Let’s say that a wrong shoe can ruin the most impeccable of outfits. And it happens often.

18.If you could talk with someone of your choice in the world for an hour, who would you choose and what would you ask them?

Lived, Annie Leibotivz and let me tell you all the anecdotes behind your photos. I have only heard a part of it and they are too funny.
Of the past, Coco Chanel to let me tell all the anecdotes behind his work.
Anyway, I’d choose a woman to talk to.

19. How important is the outward appearance today? What do you think of the beauty canons of today? Do you think they are somehow “imposed” on people? Is this negative or not, in your opinion?

We are in the social age. Appearing is better than being, not for me. I appear but above all I am. I try to be faithful and honest with myself and with others.

20. A phrase that represents you?

“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know who it is” (cit. Forrest Gump)

Whatever happens they are sweet and good (cit. Oteri)

21. Your place of the heart?

I don’t tell you Liguria not to be trivial, but an island of Greece and certainly New York.

22. Your best value and your worst flaw?

You have to ask others, I’m not objective.

23. What do you think is the meaning of this carousel called “life”? Do you ever wonder?

Live it fully

24. If you were another person, would you be friends with yourself?

My best friend!

25. A wish for the future?

Always manage to be yourself. Centered and concentrated.

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